[sergeantdave]

“but Mr Zak’s account connects the Republicans of that age to limited government free-market principles of today.”

Are you drunk? The Radical Republicans passed three separate Reconstruction acts to ensure the looting of the Southern states. There was nothing about “limited government” in these acts. President Johnson vetoed these acts but was overuled by Thadeus Stevens and his gang of thieving radicals to “punish” the southern states.

The Radical Republicans insisted on military rule and the subsequent thievery in the south, in direct contradiction of President Lincoln’s wishes to bring the southern states back into Union after the war.

How about you tell everyone the “conditions” the Radical Republicans demanded before allowing the southern states to rejoin the union.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I don't think Reconstruction was an imovershing of the Southern people as much as attempt to break the power of the corrupt slave trading aristocracy. For too long that narrow interest passed itself off as "the Southern people" to the detriment of hard working Southerners of both races. The tragedy of Reconstruction was that it was not carried out more vigorously to a conclusion of a broad based bi-racial Republican society. The South would have been more prosperous and peaceful a lot sooner. And as a whole, the carpetbaggers had a positive influence that needed a capital boost to escape feudalism. A lot of my North Georgia relatives got a chance to feed their families at Yankee-owned textile plants.

How about you tell everyone the “conditions” the Radical Republicans demanded before allowing the southern states to rejoin the union.

Ratification of the 14th Amendment.

[Michael Zak]

There was nothing much to loot in the postwar South. In contrast, many southern industries were established by northerners after the Civil War.